head to head · open source
TiDB vs postgrest
TiDB has 40,701 GitHub stars, 6,284 forks, 6,976 open issues and last shipped yesterday. postgrest has 27,740 stars, 1,234 forks, 400 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. TiDB leads on adoption by 47% (40,701 vs 27,740 stars). TiDB is written in Go under Apache-2.0; postgrest is written in Haskell under MIT. TiDB has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, postgrest 4%. TiDB was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (database), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| TiDB | postgrest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 28K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Haskell |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick TiDB if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick postgrest if
- You want the postgrest feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Haskell
- You evaluated both and postgrest fits your workflow better
About TiDB
TiDB TiDB (/’taɪdiːbi:/, "Ti" stands for Titanium) is an open source, cloud native, distributed SQL database designed for high availability, horizontal and vertical scalability, strong consistency, and high performance. Key Features Quick Start Need Help? Architecture Contributing License See Also Acknowledgments Key Features Distributed Transactions : TiDB uses a two phase commit protocol to ensure ACID compliance, providing strong consistency. Transactions span multiple nodes, and TiDB's distributed nature ensures data correctness even in the presence of network partitions or node failures. Horizontal and…
About postgrest
PostgREST serves a fully RESTful API from any existing PostgreSQL database. It provides a cleaner, more standards compliant, faster API than you are likely to write from scratch. Sponsors Big thanks to our sponsors! You can join them by supporting PostgREST on Patreon. Usage 1. See the docs for how to install PostgREST on your platform. You can also use Docker. 2. Invoke for help: Documentation Latest documentation is at postgrest.org. You can contribute to the docs in PostgREST/postgrest/docs. Performance TLDR; subsecond response times for up to 2000 requests/sec on Heroku free tier. If you're used to servers…
read the full postgrest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is TiDB or postgrest more popular?
TiDB has 40,701 GitHub stars and postgrest has 27,740. TiDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are TiDB and postgrest free?
Both are open source. TiDB is licensed under Apache-2.0 and postgrest under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between TiDB and postgrest?
TiDB is written in Go and postgrest in Haskell. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, TiDB or postgrest?
Choose TiDB if you want the larger community (40,701 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose postgrest if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.